Leading by Being^® for Generation Next
A Personal Leadership Training

with Donato Jaggers and Daniela Di Piero

Starting March 2009

Who Is This Program For? »
How We Work »
Training Outcomes »
Structure of Leading by Being for Generation Next Training »
Logistics »

Leading by Being® for Generation Next offers a new kind of personal leadership training that teaches:

The skills to live a life that is fully engaged, meaningful, and active while also deeply reflective.
The capacity to express your wholeness – all you love and value – in the context of your life’s work and study.
The awareness necessary to balance your personal fulfillment with service to the wellbeing of the world around you.
The capacity to lead by being, or as Gandhi once put it, “To be the change we want to see in the world.”

Personal Leadership

The times we live in are complex. Radical change is happening on so many levels – global and local, individual and social – and with that change comes a need for new definitions and capacities of leadership. Whether you are in school, out of school, preparing for a specific career, exploring your passions and interests, moving into social action, raising a family, or creating a business, you probably feel the need to attend to the wellbeing of a world that is increasingly unsustainable. As the pressure to create change intensifies, we need leaders who, through example, cultivate stillness and reflection as qualities that lend steadiness and wisdom to our actions. Without this capacity, we run the terrible risk of perpetuating the very forces that we are trying to change. A new world requires a new form of leadership.

We define “personal leadership” as the intentional process of identifying and bringing what is “missing” in any given situation – through action, insight, or stillness.

Who Is This Program For?

An adaptation of our highly successful Leading by Being® training this new program is designed especially for the new generation of young adults who long to:

Engage with the world through work and social action in a way that is passionate, beautiful, mature, loving and wise.
Express their aliveness, passion, wisdom and humanity through meaningful action in the world.
Walk their talk in a way that models a new way of being in the world.

Leading by Being® has been conducted in North America and Europe for the past eight years. Leading by Being® for Generation Next (LBBGN) has long been a vision of the Academy and will begin its first year in March 2009, offering an exciting chance for young adults, 18-24, to experience a unique training in personal leadership that is both grounded in the Academy’s expertise and also an exploration of new ground.

LBBGN is attracting a diverse group of young people who are interested in transformative learning and social change. We invite aspiring leaders as well as established leaders, with the understanding that we all have much to learn from one another. We welcome participants who are seeking their place in the world in a way that balances self-fulfillment with service.

How We Work

Personal Leadership means, as Gandhi said, "being the change we want to see in the world". It grows out of self-understanding, compassion, and an engagement with a wide range of human experience. This understanding allows us to activate a dynamic field of connection among people. We call this a Learning Field.

Leading by Being® for Generation Next is an inquiry into the experience of being human. The exploration happens within the individual self and also through active engagement in the evolving group learning field.

Leading by Being® for Generation Next is a training, in that it transmits specific information and cultivates specific capacities and outcomes. But it is also a joint exploration into unknown territory for us all – facilitators and participants alike.

LBBGN draws from a broad spectrum of resources, including psychology, contemplative practices, shamanic practices, ritual forms, rites of passage, movement, music, creative expression, and time in nature.

"There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost."

~ Martha Graham

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

~ Margaret Mead

“The LBB program is an amazing experience that has completely transformed my life! While the journey has certainly been intense, I’ve felt incredibly well supported at every step of the way by our deeply compassionate facilitators, and by my fellow participants, whom I now count among my closest friends.”

~ Peter Coughlan,
Partner, IDEO
Palo Alto, CA

Training Outcomes

What you will take away:

A deepening knowledge of your natural and authentic place as a leader, and greater freedom in bringing forth personal leadership that rests in your fundamental values, integrity, strength, vulnerability, and love.
An ongoing practice of learning as a path to experiencing the fullness of your humanity and the humanity of others.
Practical skills and capacities that are clearly aligned with your values and that will serve you in a variety of group contexts.
Experience of stillness and non-action as vital aspects of personal leadership.
Trust in the organic, unfolding nature of human dynamics as a key aspect of leadership.
Tools for transforming personal limitations and engaging with your gifts.
Familiarity with group process and the development of a Learning Field. Greater experience and degrees of comfort in working intimately within group contexts towards shared goals.
Experience working with complex questions with individuals and groups.
Confidence in thinking ‘outside the box’ for insights and bringing them into action.
An appreciation of energetic and transpersonal dimensions of being and our connection to the whole.
A vision and specific plan of action to move you into a new phase of personal leadership in your life, study, and work in the world.

Structure of Leading by Being® for Generation Next Training

The Leading by Being® for Generation Next Training is divided into three modules:

Module 1: Who Am I?
3 Sessions

In this module we explore:

How we understand all aspects of self: constructed self, authentic self, and transpersonal or non-self.
How these aspects of self interconnect and how to move freely between them.
What ongoing support we need to keep ourselves awake to self-discovery.
How we can support one another in our learning.
How we stop and listen to ourselves and hear what is truly needed in the world.

Module 2: Who Are We?
2 Sessions

In this module, we explore:

What we can learn about nourishing individual growth while also serving the group as a whole.
How we are both shaped by and creators of the Learning Field.
How we can bring personal leadership to support the group’s aliveness, creativity, learning and productivity.
How we use silence.
What it takes to be truly open to the emergent mystery and transpersonal nature of group.

Module 3: What Is It?
3 Sessions, one of which is an international service-learning trip

In this module, we explore:

How we take forward our learning from the first two modules of the training and find our places in the world as creative, compassionate leaders, embodying the change we want to see.
What arts of being, practices, and skillful means are now necessary for us to fulfill our purpose in the big picture – as students, facilitators, teachers, managers, doctors, artists, parents, social activists, or whatever our calling.
How we cultivate and sustain active Learning Fields in the groups, organizations, and communities of which we are a part.
How we embody stillness and reflection in the heat of change.
Service and social action in the world beyond our own community on an international service-learning trip.

Between intensives, participants explore specific questions through reading, written reflection, group work, and practices of daily life.

Our learning model is “Experience-Reflection,” meaning that the training consists of experiential activities and then reflection on those activities, a process that over time leads to integration and transformation.

From the beginning of the training each participant will be assigned a mentor, to help her navigate her way through her own transformation and into active service and leadership in the world. Each mentor will also be a graduate of the Academy’s Leading By Being® program, and so will know intimately the ground to be covered.

The whole training takes place over 18 months. We have found that it is essential to allow this stretch of time in order to work through points of inquiry deeply and comprehensively, to integrate insight and experience, and to apply and test what is being learned. We intend this training to constitute a significant journey within the course of each participant’s lifetime.

Logistics

The Training takes place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, consisting of a four-day session every two months. Out-of-state applicants are welcome.
For more information, including cost, or to obtain an application, please contact Daniela Di Piero at 575-770-0805 (danieladipiero[at]gmail.com) or Donato Jaggers at 505-995-1860 (donato[at]aloveoflearning.org). We look forward to hearing from you!

Facilitators

Donato Jaggers is the Associate Director of the Academy for the Love of Learning and a co-creator of LBBGN. He has a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Sociology, and is a long-term student of spirit, nature and social change.

Daniela Di Piero is Founder and Executive Director of Movimiento, a youth-driven nonprofit for social change, leadership, and meaningful work, and co-creator of LBBGN. She has a Masters in Teaching from Brown University and is working on her Ph.D. in Psychology.

Plus guest facilitators

Program photographs courtesy of Movimiento.

Leading by Being® for Generation Next A Personal Leadership Training

Leading by Being^® for Generation Next
A Personal Leadership Training